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HENRY CABOT LODGE 





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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 




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BY 



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HENRY CABOT LODGE 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

^{)e 3&tt}et^ttie Press, Cambritige 

1892 






Copyright, 1892, 
By henry CABOT LODGE. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., V. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Ca 



From, many words which passed with the 
hour of speech, I save these few, because I am 
glad to have spoken them, and because there are 
friends of mine who are kind enough to wish 
to keep them. For myself, I take the pleasure 
of inscribing them to Tny friend Theodore Roose- 
velt, in token of personal affection, and of ad- 
miration for his work as a historian and for his 
services as a public man. 



CONTENTS. 

PASS 

The Independent Sphut of the Puritans 1 

December 22, 1884. 

The Uses and Responsibiuties of Leisure 11 

March 23, 1886. 

The Blue and the Gray 25 

June 17, 1887. 

The Puritans 31 

December 22, 1887. 

Harvard College in Politics 37 

November 22, 1888. 

The Day we Celebrate 41 

December 21, 1888. 

International Copyright 49 

May 2, 1890. 

The Civilization of the Public School. A Reply . . 57 
January 13, 1890. 

Massachusetts 65 

October 23, 1891. 



THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE 
PURITANS. 

IN ANSWER TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER OF THE NEW 

ENGLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, 

DECEMBER 22, 1884. 



THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE 
PURITANS. 



It is no slight trial for a Massachusetts man, especially 
for one of the younger generation, to be called upon to 
speak in this presence, where Choate and Webster spoke 
in bygone days and where the melodious echoes of their 
eloquence ever seem to linger. The shy and retiring dis- 
position so characteristic of the sons of New England, 
and which so often hinders their worldly success, becomes 
at such a moment really oppressive. I can only escape 
from it by reflecting that this is one of the rare occasions 
when it is fair that we should all throw aside the native 
modesty of our race and utter boldly the favorable opin- 
ions which we really entertain in regard to the Puritans 
and their descendants. 

For more than three quarters of a century your so- 
ciety has gathered here in the metropolis of the nation to 
commemorate the founding of that little group of common- 
wealths known as New England. The best thing we can 
say of that event is that it is one of the great facts in 
himian progress which really deserves to be freshly remem- 
bered. We are honestly and frankly proud to be the de- 
scendants of men who placed upon the roadside of history 
such a milestone as Plymouth Rock. Yet behind this 
pride there is a gentler but even stronger feeling, gentler 



4 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 

because it springs from love of home, stronger because its 
roots are entwined among our heart-strings. 

The lands to which Nature has been most prodigal are 
by no means those which are dearest to their children. 
New England has a harsh climate, a barren soil, a rough 
and stormy coast, and yet we love it, even with a love 
passing that of dwellers in more favored regions. Na- 
ture, niggard in material gifts, has yet been gracious 
there in all that appeals to the eye or touches the heart, 
and we love the Puritan land for moimtain and river, for 
hillside and valley, for rugged cliffs and high sand-dunes, 
with the measureless sea ever mui*muring beneath. Be- 
yond all and above aU, we love New England for what is 
there enshrined : the graves of her honored dead ; the 
hallowed spots where great deeds were wrought ; the mem- 
ories of the men who gave their labors and their lives to 
the service of their country and mankind. 

The independent spirit of New England ! That was 
a chief quality of the Puritans, and the day we cele- 
brate marks the opening of the long struggle of our 
people for independence of foreign control and foreign 
influence. The beginning was made in a period of intense 
religious ferment, and bore the scars of the time. Pilgrim 
and Puritan alike sought freedom to worship God, but it 
was freedom for themselves that they might worship God 
in their own fashion, in this new world, and not at all 
freedom of worship for any one who chanced that way 
with different opinions as to creeds and tenets. Indepen- 
dence, unfortunately, is not always synonymous with a 
generous breadth and just liberality of opinion ; at least 
it was not in the seventeenth century. The Puritan set 
up his independent church, and then made every one come 
into it on pain of death or banishment, — punishments 



THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 5 

which he inflicted upon all recalcitrants with characteristic 
vigor and promptness. Yet whatever we may think of his 
methods, he achieved his religious independence, and his 
church was his own, and not that of some one else across 
the water. 

That same Puritan spirit of hostility to foreign control 
and foreign influence has traveled far and fast since then. 
Its path has lain across the battlefields of the Revolution 
and over the bloody decks of fighting frigates in the war 
of 1812, but its mission and its work have ever been the 
same. The last vestiges of foreign influence upon our 
habits of thought seemed to vanish in the battle smoke of 
the civil war, which destroyed our previous morbid sensi- 
bility to foreign opinion, and left us 

" Self-school'd, self-scaun'd, self-honored, self-secure." 

Yet although much was then accomplished, all was not 
done. The imitative colonial propensity of mind still 
dwells with us. There is still work for the Puritan spirit 
which would go its own way and think its own thoughts. 
It is not altogether our own church, even now in the 
world of ideas ; in art, and literature, and among certain 
elements of our society. Who, for instance, has not heard 
the profound saying that in this coimtry nature does not 
lend itself to art ? Have we not, then, the glories of 
morning and of evening, the mists of dawn, the radiance 
of midday, "the lightning of the noontide ocean," the 
infinite beauties of sea and sky, of river and mountain ? 
When nature does not lend itself to art it is because there 
is no art able to borrow. Let the right men come in the 
right spirit and they will have no trouble with nature. 

Thanks to the ever-increasing number of goodly work- 
ers, the spirit of dependence on foreign ideas is fast dis- 



6 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 

appearing from om- literature. Yet I took up an Anglo- 
American or " International " volimie tlie other day, and 
the burden of the first few pages seemed to be that one 
could not sketch Fifty-third Street. That is, indeed, a 
most appalling thought. But, after all, who wants to 
sketch Fifty-third Street? We know it is not as pic- 
turesque as the Grand Canal of Venice, and we also 
know that these things are but trappings in literature. 
The conditions of French or English life are not ours, 
and are false for us. Our literature must accept, and is 
accepting in the right spirit, our own conditions, and it will 
find, as indeed it has found, the best inspiration at the 
true source, ever old and ever new, — the wellspring of 
human passion and hiunan emotion, as full of life here 
to-day as when Homer sang of Helen's beauty and Achil- 
les' wrath. 

Most of all, however, do we need the Pm-itan spirit in 
certain elements of our society. The number of men to 
whom inherited fortune brings education and command of 
time without effort on their part is ever increasing. Do 
they avail themselves fully of their opportimities, or are 
they too apt to pass their days in a vain search for distrac- 
tions and a mournful regret that this country is not some 
other country ? I am happy to believe that this is the very 
worst coimtry in the world for an idler. But to the man 
with health, wealth, education, and unlimited command of 
time, — in other words, to the man who owes most to his 
country, — here are better opportunities and higher duties 
than anywhere else. I am not going to make the familiar 
plea that yovmg men of education and wealth ought to 
perform their obvious duties as citizens. There has been 
plenty of sound argument and good advice offered on 
that score, and the proposition is well understood. 



THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 7 

But this is not all. In this question lie deeper mean- 
ings. There is a very real danger that the growth of 
wealth here may end by producing a class grounded on 
mere money, and thence class feeling, a thing noxious, 
deadly, and utterly wrong in this country. It lies with 
the men of whom I have spoken to strangle this serpent 
at its birth. They cannot do this, however, unless they 
are in full sympathy with the American people and with 
American ideas ; and to this sympathy they can never 
come by living in Europe, by mimicking foreign habits, 
by haunting well-appointed clubs, or by studying our pub- 
lic affairs in the columns of a Saturday Review, home- 
made or imported. They must go to work. Philanthropy 
and public affairs need such men, because they can give 
what others cannot spare — time and money. There is a 
great field in politics. Before they enter in, let them 
take to themselves not only the high and self-respecting 
spirit of the Puritan, but also his fighting qualities, his 
dogged persistence, and another attribute for which he 
was not so conspicuous, — plenty of good nature. They 
will need all these weapons, for it is no primrose path. 
They must be prepared to meet not only the usual abuse, 
but also much and serious prejudice. They must not 
mind defeats and hard work. If their conception of duty 
differs from that of their accustomed friends and allies, 
they must not be surprised if some of those very friends 
mete out to them the harshest measure and deal them the 
sharpest blows. 

Yet if they hold fast to two principles, — I care not 
under what party banner they serve, — if they will fear- 
lessly do what in their own eyes and before their own con- 
science is right and brave and honorable, if, like the Puri- 
tans, they wiU do the work which comes to their hands 



8 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 

with all their might, they wiU \sdn the best success. They 
will win the regard and confidence of large bodies of their 
feUaw-citizens, of those men by whose strong hands and 
active brains the republic is ever being raised higher, and 
this regard and confidence are the best and most valuable 
possessions that any American can ever hope to have. 
Let such men, then, go into politics, because they can 
give their time and energy to it, because they can do work 
worth doing, and, above all, because they will thus be- 
come truer and better Americans. 

I believe, Mr. President, that I am coming very close to 
what is called " Americanism," but of " Americanism " of 
the right sort we cannot have too much. Mere vaporing 
and boasting become a nation as little as a man. But 
honest, outspoken pride and faith in our country are 
infinitely better and more to be respected than the cidti- 
vated reserve which sets it down as iU-bred and in bad 
taste ever to refer to our country except by way of depre- 
ciation, criticism, or general negation. The Puritans did 
great work in the world because they believed most fer- 
vently in their cause, their country, and themselves. It is 
the same to-day. Without belief of this sort nothing 
worth doing is ever done. 

We have a right to be proud of our vast material suc- 
cess, our national power and dignity, our advancing civi- 
lization, carrying freedom and education in its train. Most 
of all may we be proud of the magnanimity displayed by 
the American people at the close of the civil war, a 
noble generosity unparalleled in the history of nations. 
But to count our wealth and tell our numbers and re- 
hearse our great deeds simply to boast of them is useless 
enough. We have a right to do it only when we listen to 
the solemn undertone which brings the message of great 



THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 9 

responsibilities, — responsibilities far greater than the ordi- 
nary political and financial issues which are sure to find, 
sooner or later, a right settlement. Social questions are 
the questions of the present and the future for the Amer- 
ican people. The race for wealth has opened a broad gap 
between rich and poor. There are thousands at your 
gates toiling from sunrise to sunset to keep body and soul 
together, and the struggle is a hard and bitter one. The 
idle, the worthless, and the criminal form but a small 
element of the community ; but there is a vast body of 
honest. God-fearing working men and women whose yoke 
is not easy and whose burden is far from light. 

The destiny of the republic is in the welfare of its 
working men and women. We cannot push their troubles 
and cares into the background, and trust that all will 
come right in the end. Let us look to it that differences 
and inequalities of condition do not widen into ruin. It 
is most true that these differences cannot be rooted out, 
but they can be modified, and a great deal can be done 
to secure to every man the share of well-being and happi- 
ness to which his honesty, thrift, and ability entitle him. 
Legislation cannot change humanity nor alter the decrees 
of nature, but it can help the solution of these grave 
problems. 

Practical measures are plentiful enough : the hours of 
labor; emigration from our over-crowded cities to the 
lands of the West ; economical and energetic municipal 
governments ; proper building laws ; the rigid prevention 
of adulteration in the great staples of food ; wise regula- 
tion of the railroads and other great corporations ; the extir- 
pation of race and class in politics ; above all, every effort 
to secure to labor its fair and full share of the profits 
earned by the combination of labor and capital. Here 



10 THE INDEPENDENT SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS. 

are matters of great pith and moment, more important, 
more essential, more pressing, than any others. They 
must be met ; they cannot be shirked or evaded. 

The past is across the water ; the future is here in our 
keeping. We can do all that can be done to solve the 
social problems and fulfill the hopes of mankind. Failure 
would be a disaster unequaled in history. The first step 
to success is pride of country, simple, honest, frank, and 
ever present, and this is the Americanism that I would 
have. If we have this pride and faith we shall appreci- 
ate our mighty responsibilities. Then if we live up to 
them we shall keep the words " an American citizen " 
what they now are, — the noblest title any man can bear. 



THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF 

LEISURE. 

AN ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 

MARCH 23, 1886. 



THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF 

LEISURE. 



I REMEMBER hearing Mr. Lowell say in his most charm- 
ing way, some years since, of his friend Edmund Quincy, 
that "early in life Mr. Quincy devoted himself to the 
arduous profession of gentleman, and certainly in the 
practice of it he achieved as great success as is possible 
in a country where we have business in the blood, and 
where leisure is looked down upon as the larceny of time 
that belongs to other people." The theory of life in vogue 
in the United States, and especially in New England, when 
Mr. Quincy was young, and, indeed, until within a few 
years, was in some ways a very peculiar one. It was 
firmly believed that any young man who did not have 
some regular occupation involving money - getting was 
doomed to perdition. Literature was barely tolerated ; 
the learned professions, of course, passed muster ; but busi- 
ness was much preferred. Any one who did not conform 
his life to the habits of a trading community was assumed 
to be totally idle, and in consequence thereof to be draw- 
ing his amusement from the source pointed out by Dr. 
Watts. What a fine refutation to this doctrine is the 
life of Mr. Quincy himseK ! A graceful writer of some 
very charming stories with the perfume of the eighteenth 
century sweet upon them, the author of one of the very 
best of American biographies, he holds a secure and hon- 



14 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 

orable place in our literatiu-e. An early Abolitionist, he 
put his name, his talents, and his character at the ser- 
vice of a despised cause, and never in the hour of its tri- 
umph asked or wished reward. By his brilliant corre- 
spondence in the New York "Tribune," covering many 
years, and by his witty and effective speech, he helped to 
fight the anti-slavery battle. No account of our literature 
is complete without him, and no history of the great 
movement which resulted in the abolition of slavery can 
be written without ample mention of his name and ser- 
vices. The busy money-getters, the worthy citizens who 
shrugged their shoulders and disapproved him and his 
ways, are forgotten, but the gentleman of leisiu-e is re- 
membered, and holds an honorable place in the literatm-e 
and the history of his coimtry. It is a noble record of 
well-doing, one that any man might be content to leave 
as a heritage to his children. What, then, was the 
secret ? He used his leisure, that was all. Leisure well 
employed is of high worth. Leisure unemployed is mere 
idleness and helpless drifting along the stream of life. 
The disapprobation of men of leisure which was common 
in New England in Mr. Quincy's youth erred only be- 
cause it was narrow, and could not believe that a man 
was usefidly employed unless he worked in a few well- 
recognized and accepted ways. 

It is easy enough to show the error of the old doctrine, 
and yet it would be quite as great an error to condemn it. 
Like most Puritan theories, it has at bottom a sound and 
vital principle, and the danger to-day of forgetting that 
imderlying principle of action is far greater than of our 
being warped by its too rigid application. A mere idler 
is a very poor creature. Leisure is nothing in itself. It 
is only an opportunity, and, like other opportunities, if 
wasted or abused, it is harmful and often fatal. 



THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 15 

The increase of wealth in this country and the multipli- 
cation of gi'eat fortunes has produced a corresponding 
increase in the number of young men who, fortimately or 
unfortunately, are in fact or in prospect the heirs of large 
estates. Money in itself is worthless, and gets value only 
through its purchasing power. When its real purpose is 
misunderstood it is a perilous possession, and the stern 
necessity of earning a living has proved a strong safeguard 
and help to many men. Given the command of time and 
of one's own life, and there is nothing so easy as to let the 
years slip by in indecision and infirmity of purpose untU 
it is too late. The worst outcome, of course, is when a 
man uses his great opportunity for nothing but selfish 
and sensual gratification, with no result but evil to him- 
self and to others. Far better than this cimiberer of the 
ground is the man who, if he does not use his intellec- 
tual powers, at least employs his physical gifts in some 
way. A taste, an amusement, a pursuit of any kind, 
even if only for amusement's sake, is infinitely better 
than nothing, or than mere sensual enjoyment. It is 
manly and wholesome to ride boldly and well, to be a 
good shot, a successful yachtsman, an intelligent and en- 
terprising traveler. These things are good in themselves, 
and it may be fairly said that the bold rider, the good 
shot, the skiUful seaman, if he loves these sports for 
their own sake, has in him, in all probability, the stuff of 
which a soldier or sailor may be made in the hour of the 
country's need. 

Then, again, there are the men of leisure who devote 
themselves to some intellectual pursuit, but without any 
idea of earning money or of any practical result. Such 
men sometimes do valuable work, but they nevertheless 
remain amateurs all their lives. They may be credited 



16 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 

with an honest effort for sometliing better than idleness 
or physical amusement, sometimes with fruitful work, but 
there the commendation ceases. The first thing for a 
man of leisure to do, who really wishes to count in his 
day and generation, is to avoid being an amateur. In 
other words, the first thing necessary is to acquire the 
habit of real work, and this can be done well only by 
working to obtain money, reputation, or some other solid 
value. You can only find out if your work is really 
worth doing, is in truth current gold, by bringing it to 
the touchstone of competition and an open market. 

The essential thing at the start is the habit of thinking 
and working. The subject of work or thought is not es- 
sential, for, the habit once obtained, a man will soon find 
that for which he is best fitted. Even at this very first 
step we are likely to be met with objections, and perhaps 
it is as well to clear them from the path at once. 

There is one theory which says that life at best is short 
and evil ; that we are not responsible for it, and that as 
at our utmost we can effect so little, the correct course is 
to get as much pleasure out of existence as possible. Ac- 
cepting this statement, the next proposition is that work 
or labor is an evil, and should be dispensed with. There 
is a conclusive answer to this doctrine, even if we take 
pleasure only as a test, for there is no man so discontented 
as the idle man, and imless he is witless, the older he 
o-rows the more bitter and unhappy he becomes. The 
only charm of a holiday comes from working before and 
after it. Your idle man has no holidays ; nothing but 
"the set gray life and apathetic end." It is not easy at 
the outset to labor with no taskmaster except one's own de- 
termination, but the effort grows steadily and rapidly less, 
so that in a very short time work becomes a necessity, and 



THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 17 

brings more solid and lasting pleasure and more interest 
than anything else human ingenuity can devise for our 
diversion. 

The next question is as to the particular work to which 
a man of leisure can best devote his time and his energies. 
I have known men who, without any spur from necessity, 
have addressed themselves to the professions or to busi- 
ness, and have earned there both money and distinction. 
It is needless to say that these men deserve the very high- 
est credit and the entire respect of all who know them. 
At the same time, while we may not criticise such men, it 
is impossible to doubt that they might be more effective 
in other fields than those which are primarily and essen- 
tially money getting. 

It is better for the man of leisure in learning to work 
and think, or when he has acquired that most precious 
education, to turn to the fields where men are needed who 
can labor, without pecuniary profit, for the public benefit. 
This is not only proper abstractly, but it is a duty and an 
obligation. Every gentleman pays his debts just as he 
tells the truth and keeps faith. We all owe a debt to 
our country, and none so large a debt as the man of lei- 
sure. That those who have gone before him have been 
enabled to accumulate property and leave it to him in 
secm-e enjoyment, is due to the wise laws and solid insti- 
tutions of his State and country, and to the sound and 
honest character of the American people. That we have 
a country at aU is due to those who fought for her. To 
them we owe a debt we can only try to pay by devotion to 
the country that we enjoy, and which they saved. 

The modes of working for the public are many. The 
first which suggests itself is literature, but there, as every- 
where else, the essential preliminary is to learn to work 



18 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 

practically. No man ought to begin by publishing at his 
own expense. It is far better to try at the doors of the 
newspapers, the magazines, or the publishers, until you 
can command a market for your writings, for the only 
sure way to make a writer that I know is to have him 
enter the field of competition. When he can hold his 
own with other men, then it will be time to publish, if he 
chooses, at his own expense, work of value to the world, 
but which the world could get in no other way. 

There is a still larger opportunity in the directions of 
public education and public charities. In all these there 
is a vast and growing demand for intelligent work, and 
for the most part it is only possible to men who can com- 
mand their own time. A man can win wide reputation 
in these departments, and render incalculable service to 
his feUow-men. 

It only remains now to speak of politics. Let every 
man give of his leisiu-e, be it more or less, to politics ; for 
it is simply good citizenship to do so. Discard at the 
outset the wretched habit which is far too prevalent in 
this country, and particularly, I am sorry to say, among 
highly educated persons, of regarding all men who are 
much in politics with suspicion, and of using the word 
" politician " as an uncomplimentary epithet, and usually 
with a sneer. You neither help nor hurt the politician by 
so doing, but you hurt your country and lower her repu- 
tation. There is nothing, indeed, which does more to in- 
jure politics and the public business than to assume that 
a man who enters them is in some way lowered by so 
doing. The calling ought to be and is an honorable one, 
and we should all seek to honor and elevate, not to decry 
it. Politics is a wide field, but it is a very practical one, 
and the amateur is not only singularly out of place there, 



THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 19 

but is especially apt to do harm by mistaken efforts to do 
good. Take hold of polities as you would of any other 
business, honorably and respectably, but take hold hard. 
Go to the polls, for example, and work for the man whom 
you want to see elected, and get your friends to do the 
same. If you prefer to reach political questions by voice 
or pen, do it in these ways, but let me suggest that you 
first inform yourseK about politics and politicians, for 
politics and public questions are exceedingly difficult, and 
educated men are sometimes as marvelously ignorant upon 
these subjects as they are ready in judgment and condem- 
nation concerning them. 

There is only one other point that I will touch upon as 
to politics. Work for the highest and best measures 
always. When the question is between right and wrong, 
work for what you believe to be right without yielding a 
jot. In such questions no compromise is possible. For- 
tunately for us, however, great moral questions like slavery 
are extremely rare in politics. Most public questions, 
grave and important as many of them are, are not moral 
questions at all, and form no part of the everlasting con- 
flict between good and evil, between right and wrong. 
Do not faU into the cant of treating public questions as 
moral questions when they are not so. There is a tempta- 
tion to a certain class of minds to do this, because, the 
morality of the question being granted and they being in 
the right themselves, it is then possible to look down upon 
their opponents and call their enemies wicked. This is 
cant of the worst kind. All cant and hypocrisy are 
mean and noxious, and none more so than the political 
varieties. 

Stand for the right, then, against the wrong always, 
but where there is no moral question involved do not, by 



20 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 

insisting on the unattainable, lose everything. Because, 
for example, the civil service act of 1883 falls far short 
of perfection and completeness, should we therefore reject 
it ? That woidd be f oUy. Let us take it as a first great 
step toward our goal of removing routine offices from 
politics. The political history of the English-speaking 
race is in truth a history of legislative compromises. 
When compromises have not been made with wrong, they 
have been the stepping stones in the great march of our 
civilization. They mark the line between the people who 
are ever moving forward to higher things and those who, 
insisting on the highest at once, never advance, but stand 
shrieking with helpless confusion, always in one place. 

I have touched very cursorily and unsatisfactorily on 
some of the fields of public usefidness open to men whose 
time is wholly at their own disposal, and open in some 
measure to others as well. In conclusion, I want to say a 
word on two points which seem to me of great impor- 
tance, and which apply to all alike. Be in sympathy 
with your age and country. It is easier to get out of sym- 
pathy with the movements of the time than you think. 
What every man must work with and understand are the 
forces about him. If he does not, his usefulness is crip- 
pled. To be out of sympathy with your country and 
with American ideas is a grievous fault, to be shunned at 
all hazards. If a man fails to respect himself no one 
wiU respect him, and if he does not love and honor his 
coimtry he will deserve nothing but contempt. The most 
utterly despicable of all things is the Anglomania which 
prevails in certain quarters. It should be impossible here, 
for no men who have been brought up beneath the shad- 
ows of Memorial Hall, and who have felt the influence 
that descends from its silent tablets, ought to be anything 



THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 21 

but ardent Americans. All I would say is, make your 
Americanism and your patriotism living and active forces 
in your daily life. 

The other point which I wish to make is in regard to a 
danger which I think is in some measure pecidiar to Har- 
vard. I mean the tendency to be merely negative and 
critical. This arises, in part at least, from a dread of be- 
coming ridiculous by over-enthusiasm, and from the feel- 
ing that it is " in better form "to be exceedingly quiet 
and reticent. But it will not do to confine one's self in 
life to the purely critical attitude, for it leads to nothing. 
It may be able to destroy, it can never create. It frequently 
makes a man sour, envious, and spiteful ; it never makes 
him helpful, generous, brave, and the doer of gi-eat deeds. 
Moreover, if a man contents himself with criticism and 
negation, he is likely to become not only narrow and arro- 
gant, but ineffective. To be weU balanced and efficient 
we must see the good as well as the evil in both men and 
things. It is comparatively easy to stand by and criticise 
the men who are struggling, for instance, in the stream of 
politics, but a far better thing is to plimge in yourseH and 
try to do something, and to bring some definite thing to 
pass. If you attain to nothing more, you will at least be a 
wiser and better critic, and therefore far more weighty 
and influential, because more sympathetic and more 
intelligent. 

Let me illustrate once more, by an example, what I 
mean by positiveness and enthusiasm and by disregard 
of seH and of the weak dread of being ridiculous. You 
have all, no doubt, read the novels and sketches of Mr. 
Cable. You know that he is one of the most charming 
of our younger writers. Mr. Cable has lately turned 
aside to enter another field, and to do what in him lies to 



22 THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 

right what he believed to be a wrong. I suppose that 
every one who listens to me has read the two essays enti- 
tled " The Freedman's Case in Equity " and " The Silent 
South." The modest volmne which contains them is, I 
believe, an epoch-making book. Not now, perhaps, but in 
the days that are yet to be. These essays are written of 
course admirably, with literary skill and great force. The 
words, however, are not so much ; the great fact is the 
man who uttered them. It is the act that will live, and 
which is destined to mark a stage in our national devel- 
opment. Mr. Cable is the grandson and son of a slave- 
holder. He was a soldier in the Confederate army. He 
is a Southerner through and through, with all the tradi- 
tions and prejudices of the South. He saw before him a 
despised race just released from slavery ; he saw that the 
condition of that race presented a mighty problem, vital 
to the weKare of a large part of our common country. 
He believed that this problem was one which legislation 
could not reach, but which public opinion in the South 
could alone deal with. He studied the question, and 
came to the conclusion that the treatment of the negro 
was neither right nor honest. How easy it was to remain 
silent ! He had everything to gain and nothing to lose 
by silence, and he thereupon spoke out. He faced hos- 
tility, ostracism almost, at the South, and indifference at 
the North. He was assailed, abused, and sneered at, but 
he has never been answered, and he never will be an- 
swered until he obtains from the tribimal to which he aj)- 
pealed, from Southern opinion itseK, the inevitable ver- 
dict that he is right and that the wrong shall be redressed. 
It was a great and noble act. It was positive and not 
negative. Mr. Cable will be remembered for those essays 
while we have a history, and long after the very names of 



THE USES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEISURE. 23 

those who stood coldly by and criticised him have been 
forgotten. 

It is by such men that the work of the world is done, 
and every man can do his part, be it great or small, if he 
rests on the same everlasting principle. The errors, the 
mistakes, the failures, the ridicule, will be forgotten, but 
the central, animating thought, manly, robust, and gen- 
erous, will survive. Be in sympathy with your time and 
your country. Be positive, not negative. Live the life of 
your time, if you would live at aU. These are generali- 
ties^ I know, but they mean everything to me because 
they define a mental and moral attitude which is essential 
to virility and well doing. Let that attitude be right, 
and the man upon whom fortune has bestowed the gift of 
leisure wiU become, as he ought, one of the most useful 
and one of the busiest of men. If he is this, the rest 

will care for itseK. 

" In light things 

Prove thou the arms thou long'st to glorify. 

Nor fear to work up from the lowest ranks, 

Whence come great nature's captains. And high deeds 

Haunt not the fringy edges of the fight, 

But the pell-mell of men." 



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. 

IN ANSWER TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER TO ROBERT 

E. LEE CAMP OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS, 

IN FANEUIL HALL, JUNE 17, 1887. 



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. 



To such a toast, sir, it woidd seem perhaps most fit- 
ting that one of those should respond who was a part of 
the great event which it recalls. Yet, after aU, on an 
occasion like this, it may not be amiss to caU upon one 
who belongs to a generation to whom the Rebellion is 
little more than history, and who, however insufficiently, 
represents the feelings of that and the succeeding genera- 
tions as to our great civil war. I was a boy ten years old 
when the troops marched away to defend Washington, 
and my personal knowledge of that time is confined to 
a few broken but vivid memories. I saw the troops, 
month after month, pour through the streets of Boston. I 
saw Shaw go forth at the head of his black regiment, 
and Bartlett, shattered in body but dauntless in soul, ride 
by to carry what was left of him once more to the battle- 
fields of the republic. I saw Andrew, standing bare- 
headed on the steps of the State House, bid the men 
godspeed. I cannot remember the words he said, but I 
can never forget the fervid eloquence which brought tears 
to the eyes and fire to the hearts of all who listened. I 
understood but dimly the awful meaning of these events. 
To my boyish mind one thing alone was clear, that the sol- 
diers as they marched past were all, in that supreme 
ho\ir, heroes and patriots. Amid many changes that simple 
belief of boyhood has never altered. The gratitude which 



28 THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. 

I felt then I confess to to-day more strongly than ever. 
But other feelings have in the progress of time altered 
much. I have learned, and others of my generation as 
they came to man's estate have learned, what the war 
really meant, and they have also learned to know and to 
do justice to the men who fought the war upon the other 
side. 

I do not stand up in this presence to indulge in any 
mock sentimentality. You brave men who wore the gray 
would be the first to hold me or any other son of the 
North in just contempt if I should say that, now it was 
all over, I thought the North was wrong and the result of 
the war a mistake, and that I was prepared to suppress 
my political opinions. I believe most profoimdly that 
the war on our side was eternally right, that our victory 
was the salvation of the country, and that the results of 
the war were of infinite benefit to both North and South. 
But however we differed, or stiU differ, as to the causes 
for which we fought then, we accept them as settled, com- 
mit them to history, and fight over them no more. To 
the men who fought the battles of the Confederacy we 
hold out our hands freely, frankly, and gladly. To cour- 
age and faith wherever shown we bow in homage with 
uncovered heads. We respect and honor the gallantry 
and valor of the brave men who fought against us, and 
who gave their lives and shed their blood in defense of 
what they believed to be right. We rejoice that the 
famous general whose name is borne upon your banner 
was one of the greatest soldiers of modem times, because 
he, too, was an American. We have no bitter memories 
to revive, no reproaches to utter. Reconciliation is not 
to be sought, because it exists already. Differ in politics 
and in a thousand other ways we must and shall in all 



THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. 29 

good-nature, but let us never differ with each other on 
sectional or State lines, by race or creed. 

We welcome you, soldiers of Virginia, as others more 
eloquent than I have said, to New England. We wel- 
come you to old Massachusetts. We welcome you to Bos- 
ton and to Faneuil Hall. In your presence here, and at the 
sound of your voices beneath this historic roof, the years 
roll back and we see the figure and hear again the ring- 
ing tones of your great orator, Patrick Henry, declaring 
to the first Continental Congress, "The distinctions be- 
tween Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New 
Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an 
American." A distinguished Frenchman, as he stood 
among the graves at Arlington, said, " Only a great people 
is capable of a great civil war." Let us add with thank- 
ful hearts that only a great people is capable of a great 
reconciliation. Side by side, Virginia and Massachusetts 
led the colonies into the War for Independence. Side by 
side they founded the government of the United States. 
Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox, Moultrie and Pres- 
cott, men of the South and men of the North, fought 
shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same imiform of buff 
and blue, — the imiform of Washington. 

Your presence here brings back their noble memories, 
it breathes the spirit of concord, and unites with so many 
other voices in the irrevocable message of union and good- 
will. Mere sentiment all this, some may say. But it is 
sentiment, true sentiment, that has moved the world. 
Sentiment fought the war, and sentiaient has reunited us. 
When the war closed, it was proposed in the newspapers 
and elsewhere to give Governor Andrew, who had sacri- 
ficed health and strength and property in his public du- 
ties, some innnediately lucrative office, like the collector- 



30 THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. 

ship of the port of Boston. A friend asked him if he 
would take such a place. " No," said he ; "I have stood 
as high priest between the horns of the altar, and I have 
poured out upon it the best blood of Massachusetts, and 
I cannot take money for that." Mere sentiment truly, 
but the sentiment which ennobles and uplifts mankind. 
It is sentiment which so hallows a bit of torn, stained 
bunting, that men go gladly to their deaths to save it. 
So I say that the sentiment manifested by your presence 
here, brethren of Virginia, sitting side by side with those 
who wore the blue, has a far-reaching and gracious in- 
fluence, of more value than many practical things. It 
tells us that these two grand old commonwealths, parted 
in the shock of the Civil War, are once more side by side 
as in the days of the Revolution, never to part again. It 
tells us that the sons of Virginia and Massachusetts, if 
war should break again upon the country, will, as in the 
olden days, stand once more shoulder to shoulder, with no 
distinction in the colors that they wear. It is fraught 
with tidings of peace on earth, and you may read its 
meaning in the words on yonder picture, " Liberty and 
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." 



THE PURITANS. 

IN ANSWER TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER OF THE NEW 

ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, 

DECEMBER 22, 1887. 



THE PURITANS. 



This is the day that New England men everywhere set 
apart as sacred to the memory of those who fomided the 
brave old commonwealths where they were born, and which, 
however far they may have wandered, they never cease to 
love. In so doing they only obey a most deeply-rooted 
instinct of human nature. One of the earliest forms of 
religion to which primitive man turned for consolation 
and support was ancestor worship. Indeed, it is but the 
other day that Japan disestablished Shintoism, the official 
religion of the state, an ancestor worship which for ages 
has maintained itseK in the face of newer faiths and more 
popular creeds. The religious form of ancestor worship 
has departed long since from our race, but the sentiment 
remains. The Chinaman, who reverses all our habits, has 
his ancestors ennobled when he himseK arrives at dis- 
tinction. The people of the Western world turn their 
ancestors to better account, by using them as an argu- 
ment in favor of benefits to be conferred upon themselves. 
To us in this country, where all hereditary distinctions 
have been from the outset wisely abolished, ancestors are 
chiefly useful as furnishing pleasant opportunities of this 
kind for mental and moral improvement. To the New 
England er they have an especial value, because his retir- 
ing and modest nature makes him unwilling to assert 
himself or sing his own praises. His diffidence, there- 
fore, finds a welcome shelter in doing justice to ancestral 



34 THE PURITANS. 

deeds and virtues, and thus he is able to shine with the 
mild refulgence of a reflected light. 

Nothing in this way could be more suggestive than the 
name of the famous old county which you have coupled 
with mine. In Essex County the Puritan foimded his 
first town and set up his first church. As the Puritans of 
Essex were first in order of settlement, so were they 
always the most extreme representatives of the day in 
politics or religion. It was the stern old Essex Puritan 
John Endicott who cut St. George's cross from the Eng- 
lish flag because it savored of idolatry. It was an Essex 
clergyman who was cast out of his pulpit because he led 
his townsmen in a refusal to pay illegal impositions to 
Andros, as John Hampden had refused ship money to 
Charles I. It was in Essex that resistance was organized 
to the domination of the capital ; and it was in Essex, too, 
that the dark and morbid side of Puritan faith found its 
last expression in the madness of the witchcraft trials. 
So when we speak of Essex Coimty the name brings to 
us all that is most characteristic and most essential in 
Puritanism. 

The time has come when we ought to judge the Puritan 
fairly, and see him as he really was, — not tricked out in 
virtues which he never would have claimed, nor bedaubed 
with vices of which he was entirely innocent. There is 
no lack of opportunity for fit judgment. The Puritan 
did not creep along the byways of his time. He stands 
out in history as distinctly as a Greek temple on a hill- 
top against the brightness of the clear twilight sky. It 
is a stern figure enough, lacking many of the ordinary 
graces, but it is a manly figure withal, full of strength 
and force and purpose. He had grave faults, but they 
were the faidts of a strong and not a weak nature, and his 



THE PURITANS. 35 

virtues were those of a robust man of lofty aims. It is true 
that he drove Roger Williams into exile and persecuted 
the Antinomians, but he founded successful and God-fear- 
ing commonwealths. He hanged Quakers, and in a mad 
panic put old women to death as witches, but he planted a 
college in the wilderness and put a schoolhouse in every 
village. He made a narrow creed the test of citizenship, 
but he founded the town-meeting, where every man helped 
to govern and where all men were equal before the law. 
He banished harmless pleasures and cast a gloom over 
daily life, but he formed the first union of States in the 
New England confederacy, and through the mouth of one 
of the witchcraft judges uttered an eloquent protest 
against human slavery a century before Garrison was 
born or Wilberforce began his agitation. He refused 
liberty of conscience to those who sought it beneath the 
shadow of his meeting-house, but he kept the torch of 
learning burning brightly in the New World. In the 
fullness of time he broke the fetters which he had himself 
forged for the human mind, as he had formerly broken the 
shackles of Laud and Charles. He was rigid in his pre- 
judices, and filled with an intense pride of race and home, 
but when the storm of war came upon the colonies he gave 
without measure and without stint to the common cause. 

Has not New England, the home of the Pviritan, 
learned, too, the lesson of the times as the long proces- 
sion of the years moved by ? Has she not learned and 
taken to her heart the lesson of this great commonwealth, 
which from the beginning stood for a free church in a 
free state, the doctrine now accepted throughout the 
length and breadth of the land? Has she not freed her- 
self from the narrowing influence of her early creeds, and 
turned her intellect to broader and nobler works ? 



36 THE PURITANS. 

Call the roll of our poets and you will find New Eng- 
land's answer in the names of Longfellow and Lowell, 
of Emerson and Holmes. Call the roll of our historians 
and you will find her answer again in the names of Pres- 
cott and Motley, of Bancroft and Parkman. Turn to old 
Essex, the birthplace and the centre of Puritanism, and 
she will respond with the greatest name of all, Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, and yet again with that beloved name to 
which we all bowed in reverence but the other day, the 
name of Whittier. To-day Essex holds as her noblest 
possession, and the Puritan States cherish above all men, 
the gracious poet who by pure and noble verse has been a 
voice and a guide to their people. Yet this poet whom 
New England so loves and cherishes is a member of that 
sect which two himdred years ago she persecuted and ex- 
iled. Is not this in itself a commentary upon the growth 
of New England above all tributes of praise ? 

We honor the Puritan, despite all his errors, for his 
strong, bold nature, his devotion to civic freedom, and his 
stern, unconquerable will. We would not barter our de- 
scent from him for the pedigree of kings. May we not 
now say that we also honor him because his race has 
shown itself able to break through its own trammels, and 
" rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher 
things"? 



HARVARD COLLEGE IN POLITICS. 

FROM A SPEECH AT THE MEETING OF THE HARVAED 

REPUBLICAN CLUB, IN TREMONT TEMPLE, 

NOVEMBER 22, 1888. 



V 



HARVAED COLLEGE IN POLITICS. 



We meet here to-night with a definite purpose, and we 
meet in the name of Harvard. That name is dear, not 
only to Harvard's children, but to every son of Massa- 
chusetts. The ground on which her temples stand is holy 
groimd. It is sacred to learning, to patriotism, and to 
truth. Fair Harvard ! The name is girt with traditions 
which tell of the dark days of the savage and the wilder- 
ness, when the lamp of learning was first lighted on these 
barren shores. They speak to us of the patriotism of 
1776 and of 1861. They tell the long story of noble 
lives unselfishly given to the cause of American scholar- 
ship. 

We do not gather here to assert that we are the sole 
and only representatives of the college. All that we lay 
claim to is the right, common to all her sons, to serve, 
honor, and defend her with loyalty and truth. We do not 
come to give out to the world that Harvard College sup- 
ports the party to which we belong. Were such the pur- 
pose of this meeting, I for one would have no part or lot 
in it. We gather here to protest, in the only way open to 
us, against the attempt which has been made to drag the 
college into politics, and to use her honored name as a 
makeweight in party strife. We are not here to declare 
that the college is Republican, but to stamp as utterly 
false the assertion that our beloved alma mater is bound 
to the wheels of any man's political chariot. Harvard 



40 HARVARD COLLEGE IN POLITICS. 

belongs to no party and to no sect. Her doors stand open 
to men of every faith and every creed, and from her pre- 
cincts they go out into the world with her blessing upon 
them to fight the battle of life each in his own way. No 
man and no set of men have the right to speak for the 
great university. She is not the property of any one. 
She speaks for herseK. She is dedicated to Christ and 
the Church, and the single word upon her broad shield is 
Truth. She asks no blind subservience to the doctrines 
of any man. She gives to all who come to her a liberal 
education, not in the mere technical sense, but in the 
broad spirit of tolerance and free inquiry. She teaches 
respect for the pursuits and opinions of others. She 
frowns upon that narrowness which imputes unworthy 
motives to those who differ from it. She says to aU: 
Think for yourselves, love your country, and foUow truth 
as you see it, with an open mind and an honest heart. 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 

IN ANSWEK TO A TOAST AT THE DINNER OF THE NEW 

ENGLAND SOCIETY OF BROOKLYN, 

DECEMBER 21, 1888. 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 



There is one toast, Mr. President, to which no son of 

New England can ever refuse to respond, one sentiment 

to which he must always answer. When the President 

of a New England society looks toward any one and says, 

"I give you Forefathers' Day," even the most modest 

among us must rise and speak. Those two simple words 

have a world of meaning to the children of the Pilgrim 

and the Puritan. Mathematics symbolizes the unknown 

by a single letter, and expresses infinity by another. So 

when we meet upon this anniversary our imagination 

gathers into those two words all that we mean by New 

England. For us they stop the hurrying tide of daily life, 

and open the leaves of memory's book. In them we hear 

again the solemn music of the wind among New England's 

pines. When those magic words are uttered, the murmur 

of the rivers and the roar of the mountain torrents, the 

crash of the surf upon the ledges and the gentle lapping 

of the smnmer sea upon the shingle, sound once more in 

our ears. Again we see the meadows green and shining 

with the touch of spring, and the rocky hillsides briUiant 

with the goldenrod or glowiag in the purple flush of 

autumn. AU the scenes that we knew in childhood, and 

that in manhood we do not forget, rise up before us. It 

is but a little corner of the great land which we call 

our own, and yet we love it. 



44 THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 

We repeat the words and turn again the pages of mem- 
ory ; the landscape fades and the figures of the past are 
before us. We pass out of the eager, bustling present 
and are once more in touch with the strong race which 
clung to the rocky coast until they made it their own, and 
whose children and whose children's children have forced 
their way across the continent, carrying with them the 
principles and the beliefs of the forefathers. 

The Pilgrim and the Puritan whom we honor to-night 
were men who did a great work in the world. They had 
their faults and shortcomings, but they were not slothful 
in business and they were most fervent in spirit. They 
founded prosperous commonwealths, and buUt up govern- 
ments of laws and not of men. They carried the light of 
learning undimmed through the early years of settlement. 
They planted a schoolhouse in every village, and fought 
always a good fight for ordered liberty and for human 
rights. Their memories shall not perish, for 

" the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 

I have read, sir, that the PUgrims and the Puritans 
among their other virtues did not number that of toler- 
ance. Hostile critics have indeed insinuated that there 
was something not unlike persecution for opinion's sake 
in early New England. But, however it may have been at 
that time, in these latter days it has been the characteris- 
tic of New England to cherish freedom of speech, and no- 
where is a greater latitude found than at these very New 
England dinners. No one, so far as my observation goes, 
ever seems to feel restricted by the sentiment to which he 
is asked to answer, even when it is as novel as the one 
you have kindly assigned to me, and I am going to avail 
myself of this liberality. 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 45 

There is a wide field opened here before each one of us 
among subjects of present interest. Among other events 
there has been an election. I should like of course to 
point out its lessons. Pointing out the lessons of an elec- 
tion, however, although pleasant, is one-sided, for I have 
noticed that it is an exercise in which the winners are 
prone to indulge without much aid from the vanquished. 
I should like to preach to you on this text, for we New 
Engianders have too much of the old Puritan blood not to 
like to preach, especially to somebody else, but I will put 
the temptation aside and spare your patience. 

There is, however, one phase of the election which I 
think reaches far beyond party, if we take the trouble to 
go a little beneath the surface. I refer to the strong 
American feeling, that was developed during the canvass, 
not in noise and shouts, but in regard to many vital ques- 
tions. This feeling I think is going to last. The War for 
the Union and the issues springing from it have been set- 
tled. While they lasted they overshadowed everything 
else. But all the time other questions have been growing 
up with the growth of the nation, and are now coming to 
the front for decision. It is our duty to settle them, not 
only in the right way, but in a thoroughly American fash- 
ion. By Americanism I do not mean that which had a 
brief poHtical existence more than thirty years ago. That 
movement was based on race and sect, and was therefore 
thoroughly un-American, and failed, as all im-American 
movements have failed in this country. True American- 
ism is opposed utterly to any poKtical divisions resting on 
race and religion. To the race or to the sect which as 
such attempts to take possession of the politics or the 
public education of the country, true Americanism says, 
Hands off ! The American idea is a free church in a 



46 THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 

free state, and a free and unsectarian public school in 
every ward and in every village, with its doors wide open 
to the children of all races and of every creed. It goes 
still further, and frowns upon the constant attempt to 
divide our people according to origin or extraction. Let 
every man honor and love the land of his birth and the 
race from which he springs and keep their memory green. 
It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us have done 
with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German- 
Americans, and so on, and all be Americans, — nothing 
more and nothing less. If a man is going to be an 
American at all let him be so without any qualifying 
adjectives ; and if he is going to be something else, 
let him drop the word American from his personal de- 
scription. 

As there are sentiments and beliefs like these to be 
cherished, so there are policies which must be purely and 
wholly American and to " the manner born " if we would 
have them right and successful. True Americanism 
recognizes the enormous gravity of the social and labor 
problems which confront us. It believes that the safety 
of the republic depends upon weU-paid labor and the 
highest possible average of individual well-being. It be- 
lieves that the right solution of this problem should be 
sought without rest and without stay, and that no device, 
public or private, of legislation or of individual effort, 
which can tend to benefit and elevate the condition of the 
great wage-earning masses of this country, should be left 
untried. It sets its face rigidly against the doctrine of 
the Anarchist and the Communist, who seek to solve the 
social problems, not by patient endeavor, but by brutal de- 
struction. " That way madness lies," — and such attempts 
and such teachings, barbarous and un-American as they 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 47 

are, must and will be put down with a strong and un- 
flinching hand, in the name of the home and the church 
and the school, and of all that makes up civilization and 
the possibility of human progress. 

In the great public lands of the West an American 
policy sees one of the safeguards of the republic. It op- 
poses the further use of these lands to invite immigration 
or to attract speculation. They should be the heritage of 
the American people, and not a bait to draw a surplus 
population that we do not want. The true American 
policy goes further, and beheves that immigration should 
not only not be stimulated, but that it should be restricted. 
The pauper and the criminal, the diseased and the vicious, 
the Anarchist, the Communist and the Mormon, should be 
absolutely shut out, while the general flow of immigration 
should be wisely and judiciously checked. 

It is the American policy to admit to the Union the 
great territories of the West as fast as they can fulfill 
the conditions of statehood ; but it is not the American 
policy to admit an im- American territory with a popular 
tion of Mexicans who speak Spanish, or Utah with a 
population which defies our laws and maintains a barbar- 
ous and corrupting system of marriage. When these two 
territories are thoroughly Americanized, they can come in 
with the rest and take part in our government, but not 
before. 

It is the American policy never to meddle in the affairs 
of other nations, but to see to it that our attitude toward 
the rest of the world is dignified, and that our flag is re- 
spected in every comer of the earth, and backed by a 
navy which shall be an honor to the American name. 

Last and greatest of aU, true Americanism demands 
that the ballot box everywhere shall be inviolate, even if it 



48 THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 

takes the whole force of the United States to make it so. 
The people's confidence in the decision of the ballot box is 
the only ^aranty we have of the safety of our institu- 
tions, and we do not now guard it as we ought. It is to 
these things that the American people are looking; and 
while they have no ignorant contempt for the experience 
of other nations, they are fii-m in the faith that they must 
settle their own problems in their own way, in accordance 
with their own conditions and in the light of their own 
ideas and beliefs. In that faith they will meet the prob- 
lems and the difficulties which they, in common with all 
mankind, must face. They will move on with a high 
and confident spirit ; they will extinguish the last traces 
of sectional differences, and if they are true to themselves 
they will yet do the best work that has ever been given to 
any people on earth to do. 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

MAY 2, 1890. 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 



Mb. Speaker, all property is the creation of law. 

" The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power, 
And they should keep who can," 

has been replaced in the progress of civilization by law. 
The title deed of the sword has given way to the title 
deed of the pen. From one kind of possession to another 
the law has marched on, extending at the same time its 
protection, first given to the native of the land, to the 
stranger within its gates. 

The most recent advance is that which has recognized 
property in the creations of the mind, in inventions or in 
books, the latter of which is known as literary property. 
This formal recognition dates back, with the English- 
speaking race, to the statute of Anne ; and for two hun- 
dred and fifty years all who used " that ample speech, that 
subtle speech," have maintained the wisdom of the legis- 
lation. Literary property is recognized also in the Con- 
stitution of the United States, and the justice of copy- 
right has never been questioned in this country. 

The next step, as in the case of other property, is to 
accord to the stranger and the outsider the same property 
rights that our laws accord to the native of the coimtry. 
In all cases of ordinary property this has been fully and 
amply done ; but the last step in this path, that which 



52 INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

most conspicuously separates the civilized from the half- 
civilized or barbarous nation, has not yet been taken by 
the United States. 

We do not yet recognize the property right of the for- 
eigner in the product of his mind, or, in other words, in 
liis book. To my thinking, this is simple dishonesty, but 
I do not propose, sir, to argue that point. In the first 
place it is too plain a proposition to invite discussion, 
and in the second place national honor does not seem to 
be the subject of the story wth those who speak in oppo- 
sition to this bill. The opponents of the bill rest their 
case on widely different groimds, and seem only anxious 
to show that what is stolen is cheap. There certainly is 
some foundation for this view if we are short-sighted as to 
both the moral and the economic effects. I have no 
doubt that when Rob Roy lifted cattle, cattle were cheaper 
among the MacGregors than they were inunediately after 
the death of that lamented chieftain. But I do not think 
that that fact alters the ethics of the question. 

" In vain we call old notions fudge 

And bend our conscience to our dealing ; 
The Ten Commandments will not budge, 
And stealing will continue stealing." 

The great argument that is made here in opposition to 
international copyright is that this bill, if it passes, is 
going to make literature dear to the American people. 
Mr. Speaker, it will do nothing of the kind, and the asser- 
tion that it will do so is the barest assumption ever made. 
Take France, for example, which has an international 
copyright and has had for years. They issue there several 
popular series, well printed, perfectly readable, at five 
cents and even two cents a number ; and these series con- 
tain the best literature of France and of the world, not 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 63 

the offscourings of the literary gutters of other countries. 
The same is true in Germany ; and the effect of the law 
here will be, not to make literature dear, but in the series 
of cheap books simply to substitute for the works of for- 
eigners the works of American authors. In France and 
Germany the best literature is the cheapest. With us the 
exact reverse is the case, and we tempt our people to read 
what is worst and even assist them to do so by making it 
cheap. In one word, cheapness is determined by the con- 
ditions of your market and by the demands of your read- 
ing public, and not by copyright laws. 

The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Payson) produced 
the catalogue of the Seaside Library, and declared that 
nine tenths of it was standard literature. He read the 
names of some standard authors, of Carlyle and others, 
as if they and those like them fiUed the list. Now, see 
how plain a tale will put him down. Of the 1,073 books 
in the Seaside Library, 92 per cent, are novels, and 97 
per cent, are written by foreigners. The same propor- 
tion holds true in other cases, as any one can see who will 
read the careful analysis of Mr. Brander Matthews in his 
admirable essay on " Cheap Books and Good Books." 
Instead of nine tenths being standard literature in such 
series as these, nine tenths are fiction, of which the 
greater part is at the best foolish and enervating, and at 
the worst positively vicious. 

In this connection, allusion was made to Dickens. No 
book, let me say in passing, which was written before the 
passage of this act, is affected by it. But the gentleman 
says that, if that is true, we must look to the Dickens that 
is to come. Suppose another Dickens does come, or any 
man of equal genius writing in the English tongue, 
would the American people grudge to him who ministered 



54 INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

so to their pleasure, with whom they have wept and 
laughed, who has lightened their sorrow and softened 
their labors, the small royalty that an author receives on 
his work ? Would they grudge to-day to the creator of 
aU that marvelous fiction, from the " Pickwick Papers " to 
" Edwin Drood, " a share in the profits which are now 
reaped exclusively by the publisher ? Mr. Speaker, I do 
not believe it for one moment. Such meanness would be 
impossible to the American people, the most generous 
people in the world. 

But, sir, in the brief time allowed me I wish to speak 
chiefly in behaK of the writers of America, in behalf of 
those who write and make books, of the men who live by 
the pen, the journalists and essayists, the writers of fic- 
tion and the writers of history, and of the printers who 
aid them in the mechanical part of their task. They do 
not come here and ask you for subventions, or subsidies, 
bounties, or protection. They do not ask you to take 
their property as security, and issue to them a large 
amount of money upon it, or to build them warehouses 
in every county. They ask you simply for justice ; that 
you shall not discriminate against them, and make still 
smaller and harder opportunities and earnings which are 
never either large or easy. That is all they ask ; nothing 
else. 

You now take the foreign author's works and pay him 
nothing. You save on these the copyright, which on an 
average is ten per cent, royalty, and by this discrimina- 
tion you drive the American author out of his own mar- 
ket. Speaking as one who has followed in a humble way 
the career of literature, I say to this House that I do not 
understand how any one in his senses can imagine that 
the American author would not desire the great circula- 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 55 

tion and corresponding profit of cheap editions. That is 
really aU we ask for, and yet no American publisher can 
undertake to print an American book, with rare exceptions, 
in one of these cheap editions, for the simple reason that 
he must pay the American author a royalty, while he 
pays the foreign author none. This is a direct and unjust 
discrimination against the American author. 

As for the combinations that are talked of, the monop- 
olies that are used here as bugbears, where are they ? 

There is one lying dormant now in the cheap reprints, 
and if this bill is defeated that trust in cheap reprints will 
spring into life. International copyright is free copy- 
right, which is equal protection to all, and that is the way 
to stop that trust. The present partial system is the way 
to make trusts and combinations possible, and nothing 
else. 

There is one other point, more important than any 
other, which I wish to make to the House, and that is that 
we give to our reading public, to our girls and boys, our 
young men and women, at the most impressionable age, 
when their ideas and habits of thought are forming, the 
very books that we ought not to give them. We should 
furnish them with a high order of books, not foreign 
books, not cheap books, not translations by the myriad 
of French novels dedicated, as Matthew Arnold said, to 
the goddess of " Lubricity," not second-class English 
novels, the novels of the snob and the tuft-hunter, written 
about dukes and duchesses and lords and ladies from 
the point of view of a lackey, and which hold up ideals 
utterly hostile to ours. Not such stufE as this should we 
encourage and even force our youth to read, but the best 
books of all ages, and especially wholesome American 
books, which will bring them up to love America, which 



56 INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT. 

will fill them with American ideas, with reverence and 
love for American principles of government, and with re- 
spect for American society, instead of admiration for sys- 
tems of government and society wholly alien to their own. 
Nothing is cheap that is false. Let us be true to ourselves 
and to the youth of the Republic. 

In their name I ask for a favorable vote on this bill. 
I ask for it in the name of the printers, forty thousand 
of whom stand behind this bill, because they see that it 
will increase the work and the wages of the American 
workmen. I hold in my hand a telegram from a man 
who once stood at the case, and who now holds an hon- 
orable place among you here, in which he says : " Ask 
for leave to print on the copyright bill. I hope it wiU 
pass. Amos J. Cummings." 

I ask for it in the name of every man who uses a pen, 
whether on the daily press or in making a book, of the men 
who minister to your information, to your amusement and 
to your instruction. Think what we owe to literature ; a 
debt which never can be paid. " Books," says Dr. John- 
son, " help us to enjoy life or teach us to endure it." 
What a service is tliis. Be just, at least to those who 
help us to enjoy and teach us to endure. I ask it most 
of all in the name of the national honor. As an American 
I deplore the spectacle of the United States alone among 
the civilized nations taking the highwayman's attitude, 
robbing the foreign and the native author alike, and 
injuring their own readers beyond the power of words to 
describe. In the name of all these, of printers, writers, 
and readers, and of the good name of the Republic itself, 
I hope that the bill will pass. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC 
SCHOOL. A REPLY. 

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 
JANUARY 13, 1890. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 

A REPLY. 



The House being in Committee of the Whole on the state of the 
Union and having under consideration the bill (H. R. 12573) making 
appropriations for the support of the Army for the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1892, and for other purposes, — 

Mr. Lodge said : 

Mk. Chaieivian : I find by the Record of this morning 
that while I was absent from the House yesterday after- 
noon on business connected with the Naval Committee, of 
which I am a member, I was honored by a personal attack 
from the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Stone]. The 
carefuUy prepared sentences of that effort show much 
labor, and it was evidently the intention of the gentleman 
to be severe. He has, however, mistaken abuse for sever- 
ity; and into a competition of coarse personal abuse I 
have no intention of entering. In that field I wiUingly 
yield to him the supremacy. 

I have never indulged in personalities in debate. I 
have always foimd it possible to discuss public measures 
without personal allusions to the gentlemen who have dif- 
fered from myself in opinion. From that habit I do not 
intend to deviate now or at any time. I am always ready 
to concede to gentlemen who differ from me the same 
sincerity of motive and honesty of purpose that I claim 
for myself. But at the same time I have a large char- 



60 CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 

ity, Mr. Chairman, for those gentlemen whose mental 
limitations are such that they can reach notoriety only 
by indulging in personalities. The head and front of 
my offending, it appears, is that I am in part responsible 
for the Federal election bill. That biU was reported from 
my committee. With my colleague from Illinois [Mr. 
Rowell] and other gentlemen I helped to frame it. With 
their aid I helped to pass it through the House. 

Whatever the defects or imperfections of that measure 
may be, I believe most thoroughly in the principle which 
it involves. It is the principle of honest elections and of 
the protection of the ballot box, not in the South, not in 
the North, but throughout the length and breadth of the 
land. With that principle I am always ready and always 
proud to be identified. I believe that the Republican 
party can make no greater mistake after its past and its 
pledges than to fail now either here or elsewhere in loyalty 
to the doctrine of protection to the ballot box. I am 
quite ready to let my record stand on that question, and it 
does not disturb me in the least that gentlemen of the 
other side should assail me on account of it. It only 
shows that the shaft was well aimed and that it has gone 
home. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman seems to be annoyed 
that I had a great-grandfather. George Cabot was a re- 
spectable, honorable, and not altogether undistinguished 
man, and I am very proud of his memory, although he 
held some views in politics with which I do not personally 
agree. No attack upon New England, however, would 
ever be complete without an allusion to the Hartford Con- 
vention, of which he was president. It has been the un- 
failing resource of Democratic statesmen, when at a loss 
to say something disagreeable about New England, for the 



CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 61 

last seventy-five years, and I suppose it will continue to 
serve their turn for many more years to come, especially 
as the members of that convention are unable to resent 
anything that may be said of them. 

The attitude of New England Federalists from 1807 
to 1815 is one with which I have little sympathy and 
have had less and less as I have gone on in life ; but gen- 
tlemen on the other side seem to forget that the position 
taken by the Hartford Convention was but a repetition 
of the position taken by Jefferson and Madison in the 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. It was, whether you 
call it "nullification " or " interposition," the doctrine that 
State rights are capable of overruling the power and the 
laws of the National Government. To that principle I 
am opposed, whether it emanated in times past from Vir- 
ginia or Kentucky or New England. But it ill becomes 
representatives of the South, even when they are most 
at a loss for an argiunent, to rail at New England about 
a doctrine which fii'st found root in their soil and which 
there and there alone flourished and grew until it blos- 
somed into the red flower of rebellion. 

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Missouri also saw 
fit in the course of his remarks to assail a Senator from 
my State, who could by no possibility reply to him on 
this floor. For a speech less violent in language, relating 
to another Senator, this House saw fit to take very decisive 
action of censure. I leave it to the House to say whether 
the time has not come now to repeat that action. 

The Senator from my State to whom the allusion was 
made woidd not wish me, nor would he deem it necessary, 
that I should enter into any defense of him from such an 
attack as that made here yesterday. Long after the gen- 
tleman who made it has passed from this House into that 



62 CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 

forgetfulness which awaits him and perhaps most of us, 
the name of the Senator to whom he referred will remain 
in the history of the United States as that of a ripe scholar 
and a patriotic, far-seeing statesman, identified with great 
policies and useful measures, who would have been an 
honor to any State or any country. Still less, Mr. Chair- 
man, should I deem it necessary on this occasion to de- 
fend either New England or Massachusetts. The history 
of Massachusetts is before the world and is known of all 
men. As Webster said : " She needs no eulogium ; there 
she stands ; behold her and judge for yourselves." 

There, too, is her great record of service to the cause of 
human rights and human liberty. There are the names 
of her statesmen and of her soldiers shining ever with a 
lustre no slanders can dim. There are her lasting services 
to the advancement of the highest civilization. They are 
all written in the pages of the history of the United 
States. They stand there forever for the considerate judg- 
ment of mankind ; and her people have no fear of the 
verdict. 

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman saw fit in what was in- 
tended, I suppose, to be one of his most wounding pas- 
sages, to refer to me as the " Oscar Wilde of American 
statesmanship." It was a perfectly safe attack, for it is 
quite impossible for me to retort in kind, as I am not 
aware that the gentleman is the proprietor of any kind of 
statesmanship whatever. I suppose the allusion was really 
meant to convey the idea that the statesmanship of Mas- 
sachusetts and of New England is " effeminate." That is a 
very easy accusation to make. It is a view which natur- 
ally is taken of a high civilization by a lower one. It is 
the view which would naturally be taken of the civilization 
of the public school by the civilization of the shotgun. 



CIVILIZATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL. 63 

But let me say, Mr. Chairman, that when the two civili- 
zations came in armed contact there was nothing " effemi- 
nate " then in the civilization of the public school and of 
personal liberty. The civilization of the shotgun and of 
the slave went down before it in bloody ruin, never to 
be restored. 



MASSACHUSETTS. 

FROM CLOSING SPEECH IN DEBATE WITH HON. JOHN E. 
RUSSELL, TREMONT TEMPLE, OCTOBER 23, 1891. 



MASSACHUSETTS. 



It is a high honor to be Governor of Massachusetts. 
To all who dwell within her confines, the old State is very, 
very dear. She has a right to our love and pride. " Be- 
hold her and judge for yourselves." Here she is, a Queen 
among commonwealths, enthroned amidst her hills and 
streams, with the ocean at her feet. Trade is in her 
marts and prayer within her temples. Her cities stir with 
busy life. Her wealth grows, beyond the dreams of ava- 
rice. Her rivers turn the wheels of industry, and the smoke 
of countless chimneys tells the story of the inventor's gen- 
ius and the workman's skill. But the material side is the 
least of it. We rejoice mightily in her prosperity, but 
our love and pride are touched by nobler themes. We 
love the old State. The sand hills of the Cape, with the 
gulls wheeling over the waste of waters ; the gray ledges 
and green pastures of Essex, with the seas surging forever 
on her rocks ; the broad and fruitful valleys of the Con- 
necticut ; the dark hills and murmuring streams of Berk- 
shire, have to us a tender charm no other land can give. 
They breathe to us the soft message that tells of home and 
country. Still it is something more than the look of hill 
and dale, something deeper than habit which stirs our hearts 
when we think of Massachusetts. Behind the outward 
form of things lies that which passeth show. It is in the 
history of Massachusetts, in the lives of her great men, 



68 MASSACHUSETTS. 

in the sacrifices, in the deeds and ia the character of her 
people that we find the true secret of our love and pride. 
We may not explain it even to ourselves, but it is there 
in the good old name, and flushes into life at the sight 
of the white flag. Massachusetts ! Utter but the word 
and what memories throng upon her children ! Here 
came the stern, God-fearing men to find a home and 
found a State. Here, almost where we stand, on the 
edge of the wilderness, was placed the first public school. 
Yonder, across the river, whei-e the track of the savage 
still lingered and the howl of the wolf was still heard, was 
planted the first college. Here, through years of peril 
and privation, with much error and failure, but ever 
striving and marching onward, the Piuitans built their 
State. It was this old town that first resisted England 
and bared its breast to receive the hostile spears. In the 
fields of Middlesex the first blood was shed in the Amer- 
ican Revolution. On the slopes of Bunker Hill the 
British troops first recoiled imder American fire. Mas- 
sachusetts was the first great Commonwealth to resist the 
advance of slavery, and in the mighty war for the Union 
she had again the sad honor to lay the first blood offering 
on the altar of the nation. This is the State that Win- 
throp f oimded. Warren died for her liberties and Web- 
ster defended her good name. Sumner bore stripes in 
behalf of her beliefs, and her sons gave their lives on every 
battlefield for the one flag she held more sacred than her 
own. She has fought for liberty. She has done justice 
between man and man. She has sought to protect the 
weak, to save the erring, to raise the unfortunate. She 
has been the fruitful mother of ideas as of men. Her 
thought has followed the sun and been felt throughout 
the length of the land. May we not say, as Charles Fox 



MASSACHUSETTS. 69 

said of Switzerland, " Every man should desire once 
in his life to make a pilgrimage to Massachusetts, the 
land of liberty and peace ? " She has kept her shield im- 
spotted and her honor pure. To us, her loving children, 
she is a great heritage and a great trust. 

It is a noble thing to be Governor of such a State. 
And let it never be forgotten that it is no light matter 
to hold the place once held by John A. Andrew, when 
he " stood as high priest between the horns of the altar 
and poured out upon it the best blood of Massachusetts." 



UBRARY OF CONGRESS 

l'l!!MII'!!|!|i 



013 214 670 6 



